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TOSOT roof air
I am documenting my experience getting these installed in my 1997 Royale XL (40). I bought three of these because I want something quieter than the Dometic Penguins, and I would like to have something more efficient.
These units (15,000 BTU RV Air Conditioner) are supposed to be a lot more efficient. These are also sold for non-ducted applications, but after some back and forth, I have decided to convert these to ducted operation.
So far I have one unit mounted on the roof and running, but just blowing straight down. I removed the patchwork of rigid foam that was below the Penguin Air, mostly because at the time I thought I was not going the ducted route, but also to just get better access. I hopefully do not have to rip out the same bits on the other two.
In order to run ducted, you have to remove the control board from the interior piece and relocate it. I plan on extending the wiring so I can do that. Also, the cover for the controls board is an integral part of the interior cover plate, so I will have to cut out that part and put in another small box and hopefully not have it look terrible.
First test powered up on cold (65) with “turbo” fan, the unit is drawing ~8.8 amps. That’s probably 40% less than the Penguin if I recall. With the turbo fan, I am seeing 58F outlet and 83F inlet (my coach is in the sun, and it’s 77F outside). With auto fan,. the outlet temp dropped to 50F. I am hoping it will be possible to use the low/auto fan speed most of the time.
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6 Replies
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Very nice Andrew. Please keep us posted on your progress.
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I have the middle unit fully ducted and working. I went through a couple design iterations and ended up making some custom ducts for what I think is optimal air flow.
The original supply ducting, made of rigid board insulation, came right out of the unit and had the air go straight down, then two sharp 90 degree turns into ducting that gets directed to forward and behind the unit to front and rear of the coach (ducting actually goes through entire coach and connects to the other two units, and also has smaller outlets on the ceiling nicely concealed by other ceiling panels). This primary outlet duct continues downward, having the air slam straight into the ceiling panel, and the air makes a hard 90 degree turn to go out the front and rear of this local ceiling panel. I suspected some of the noise was due to how poorly the air flow is directed. Also, the ducting that provides airflow to other parts of the coach IMO never worked well or perhaps not even at all due to the duct design.
I sought to change this by having as gentle as possible transitions of the airflow direction to these ducts. I decided to make most of the ducting with rigid insulation panel, much like the previous ones, but I would make curved walls by kerf-cutting the material and bending and gluing to the radius I need.
Some transitions were done with metal ducting material where the thickness of the rigid foam was too thick or manipulating that material would not be practical.
A bottom panel with two quarter circles joined direct the air to the local outlets on the local ceiling panel.
The original electrical junction box was removed, as it was tucked up there and very hard to access. Two new boxes were added with the access panel facing downward for easy access. One box contains the high voltage wiring and the other the low voltage.
I forgot to measure the sounds level with the Dometic unit, but it was quite loud. In the bedroom, it was so loud that you would have to crank the TV volume to hear anything, and then when it shut off, you’d want to turn down the volume because it was so obnoxiously loud, and I’d end up repeating this process over and over as the A/C cycled on/off. This unit ranges from 32 – 40 dB depending on the fan level. I would say typically it’s going to be 35 or less.
The ducting that connects all the units also seems to work a lot better. With just the middle unit running, I get decent air flow to the very front and rear of the coach. Probably not enough to cool or heat (now that these are hat pumps) the coach with just one unit during temperature extremes, but if all you are needing is 10F cooler/warmer inside that outside, the middle unit ought to cool/warm the entire coach down within ~2 degrees.
2000 Featherlite H3-45
2024 Jeep Grand Cherokee
Leesburg, FL -
Wow
nice work
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I like it!
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The newer Dometic Penguin ac’s are a little quieter and smother because of all the plastic. I use to be a Dometic tech a few years back and I did Dometic and Coleman and both were decent, the Coleman that were equal to the Penguin had a large fan pointing straight up, I think the Coleman made a better unit, They are wired totally different, Penguins the controller is down stairs and everything wires to the up stairs furnace also (Aqua Hot) where the Coleman is wired to controller. Nothing is made like the old stuff, My Royale has all the OEM ac’s still working and they are not that noisy but when they die I will probably go with Dometic just because it would be easier, What your doing looks awesome and after you get all 3 up and working that will be interesting how they perform and sound Good Job. I’ve had a customer years that soldered a port in found the leak soldered charged it up and it worked great, For the longest time I had in my shop 2 slightly used Penguin ac’s with heat pumps that I replaced that weren’t very old I was going to fix and put on my Foretravel but I sold Foretravel and I gave them to new owner. All the roof ac’s are throw away’s I think alot of them could be fixed.
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